Pennsylvania improves readiness with enterprise planning system

“When the waters are rising, we don’t have time to look through binders or call around to see who has the latest copy of an emergency plan,” says Shane Woodmancy, emergency management specialist for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA)

Like Woodmancy, emergency managers everywhere know it is critical to get up-to-date information into the hands of responding personnel quickly. And with so many responders now carrying agency-owned or personal mobile devices, the idea of lugging boxes of paper plans to an incident site or command center seems almost unthinkable. Expectations are increasing for emergency management personnel to deploy resources effectively and make timely, coordinated decisions in the field and in the emergency operations center (EOC).

CEMPlanner is a web-based planning platform designed to bring planners together and facilitate the planning process to create and maintain standards-based and customizable plans based on state, federal and organization specific standards

In what could be termed as a pioneering move in India, the Disaster Management Department of West Bengal has initiated the implementation of an Online Incident Response and Planning System. Previstar’s Continual Preparedness System was the chosen solution to address the requirements.